Peter Saul, who will have a show at PAFA. This is one of the exhibits supported by PEI this year.
The big surprise here is not in the big dollar grants this time but in the awards to some surprising smaller outfits that are doing really interesting work, like $20,000 for Megawords (Anthony Smyrski and Dan Murphy) for a Megawords Storefront; and $5,000 planning grant for Screening Video (Nadia Hironaka and Matt Suib) for a project with filmmaker Pat O’Neill.
James Castle, featured in an exhibit at the PMA funded in part by PEI.
These smaller players in the Philadelphia scene are where some of the most exciting action is so we congratulate PEI for finding a way to retool their mission to include these guys.
The total granted this year, the 11th year of Pew’s Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiatives program, is the largest ever — $1,166,231 to 8 organizations.
The grants are for really yummy projects in museums, galleries–and even for Mural Arts for LOVE LETTER, a storytelling series of rooftop murals by Steve Powers visible only to riders of the Market Frankford El in West Philadelphia. Fun!
Congratulations, everyone! And here’s the complete list:
This year’s PEI exhibition grant recipients are:
• The Design Center at Philadelphia University
$200,000 for Lace In Translation
• Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania
$250,000 for Dirt on Delight: impulses that form clay
• Megawords (Anthony Smyrski and Dan Murphy)
$20,000 for Megawords Storefront
• The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Cal Lane, featured in the show Lace at the Design Center. Photo by Libby who saw this work at the art fairs a few years back. Lane works with metal.
128,796 for Peter Saul: A Retrospective
• Philadelphia Mural Arts Program
$237,535 for LOVE LETTER
• Philadelphia Museum of Art
$250,000 for James Castle: A Retrospective
This year’s PEI planning grant recipients are:
• Arcadia University
$25,000 for planning a project with Tacita Dean
• The Clay Studio
$25,000 for planning to build a curatorial team and a series of exhibitions
• Rosenbach Museum & Library
$24,900 for planning programming of newly-created exhibition spaces
• Screening (Nadia Hironaka and Matt Suib)
$5,000 for planning a new project with filmmaker Pat O’Neill
